We will be attending the Wine Bloggers Conference 2013 (WBC13) in a few days. The Wine Bloggers Conference is an annual get together of about 300 wine bloggers and wine professionals. WBC13 is being held in Penticton, BC. Canada this year. This is the sixth year Zephyr Adventures along with Vincent Group Consulting have organized it. Wine Bloggers from around the USA and Canada get together in a major wine growing region and explore the local wineries and wines. There are also seminars on improving your blogging skills and learning about wines.
The wines we will be tasting will not just be Canadian wines, however. We will get to try wines from all over the world. In addition to Penticton & Wine Country Tourism some of the sponsors are Great Estates of the Okanagan, Oliver-Osoyoos Wine Association, Wines of British Columbia, Wines of Uruguay, New Wines of Greece, Wines of South Africa, D.O. Rueda from Spain. For a complete list go to the WBC13 Sponsors page.
The WBC13 agenda is quite extensive. There will be seminars on Creating Compelling Content, Wine Country Videography, Learning to be a Wine Judge and much more. In addition many wineries will present their wines and educate us on what makes them special. We will be able to talk with wine makers and winery owners and many others involved in the wine industry.
We originally planned to drive to Penticton but decided to fly and spend more time in the Okanagan Valley. We are arriving a day early and will land at the Kelowna International Airport. We will rent a car and drive to Penticton for the night and stay at the Pentiction Lakeside Resort where the WBC13 is being held. This will give us a chance to explore the local area a little before we get caught up in the conference.
The next day we will drive around to explore the area and maybe visit a couple of wineries. Eventually we will end up at the Kelowna airport again, turn in the car and catch a shuttle to the Hotel Eldorado to start the Kelowna pre-excursion. There were two pre-excursions this year, one leaving from the Seattle airport and heading for Lake Chelan, Washington and the other to Kelowna area wineries.
While Penticton is our final destination we do have a pre-excursion booked in Kelowna. Kelowna is at the north end of Lake Okanagan and has many wineries within easy driving distance. Along with the WBC13 staff, Tourism Kelowna has worked very hard to give us a great overnight adventure to local wineries. Dinner at the Summerhill Pyramid Winery, breakfast at Tantalus Vineyards and lunch At CedarCreek Estate Winery. Details will be another post after we have returned to Penticton after the excursion.
Last year we attended WBC12 in Portland, Oregon. You can do a search on our site if you want to read about what we did there. We obviously try a lot of different wines from all over the world and we attend educational seminars. Lots of fun and we learn a lot from each other.
